Electoral fortunes appear to be aligning for a new community park in the “Saanich Panhandle” on B.C. Hydro land once proposed for a parking lot or ambulance station.
B.C. Hydro is willing to sell the 5.5-acre patch at 1843 Kings Rd. Residents of the panhandle — the two-block strip of Saanich from Lansdowne Road to the Royal Jubilee Hospital between Foul Bay Road and Richmond Road — want it for parkland. Now, virtually all mayoralty candidates have agreed.
Richard Atwell, Fred Haynes and Rob Wickson all said in interviews the land should be preserved as parkland.
But residents living in the Saanich Panhandle are not ready to relax. They have collected 2,400 signatures on a petition to save it as a park. They have named it “Kings Park” for its proximity to Kings Road.
“We’ve got to find a way to save it,” said Adam Kreek, who lives near the land and has been part of efforts to preserve it.
“There are grants, loans, subsidies,” said Kreek. “What’s lacking is just that fiery commitment from Saanich council to say: ‘We are going to get this and find a way to make it work.’ ”
The land was purchased by B.C. Hydro in 1958 for an electrical substation. Since then, the provincial Crown corporation has maintained it so that it hasn’t become overgrown. Nearby residents always have treated it as a park.
But Kreek said the land’s ownership and its location in the panhandle, “the neglected stepchild of Saanich,” have conspired to keep residents dangling for decades.
The Saanich Panhandle is what’s left of a farm whose owner opted to join a still rural Saanich in 1906, instead of Victoria or Oak Bay, in order to continue farming.
Over the years, panhandle residents have seen their would-be park proposed as a parking lot for Royal Jubilee Hospital and for an ambulance station.
“It just keeps on coming up, over and over and over again,” Kreek said.
Ted Olynyk, spokesman for B.C. Hydro, said the land has long been identified as surplus to the needs of the corporation. A new substation for the capital region is still needed, but its most probable location would be outside the urban core, likely in the West Shore.
Olynyk said B.C. Hydro has offered the land to the province and its agencies and to local First Nations, but received no interest.
He said the municipality is welcome to make an offer.
Olynyk would not specify a price, but said B.C. Hydro is obliged to act in the best interest of taxpayers whenever it sells assets.
